


the unimaginable

by Feenie



Category: Mystery Science Theater 3000
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hair Dyeing, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Introspection, Loss of Parent(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 17:57:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10927053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feenie/pseuds/Feenie
Summary: Kinga and Max miss their dads.No real set place in season 11, helps to have knowledge of earlier MST3K seasons to understand what's going on.





	the unimaginable

**Author's Note:**

> -kicks over garbage can- fuck it, I couldn't help but write some MST3K stuff since I can't stop thinking about Kinga and Max and how their dads might've died when they were young

Max and Kinga were childhood friends, if only thanks to Max’s dad being the second banana to Kinga’s. From the get-go, Kinga was bossy, she took joy in parroting her father and ordering both Max and Frank around, she was clearly practicing to follow her father’s footsteps in the event where somehow Kinga grew up and the Forrester line had yet to driven a man insane with the worst movie imaginable...Max could count on one hand the times Kinga had been in a sad mood.

Today, unfortunately, looked as though it was threatening to up that count to two hands.

The first time Max ever saw Kinga sad, it was when her dad explained Max’s dad was gone, and he wasn’t ever coming back. To be fair to her, it was less a ‘tears and blubbering’ sad, it was...subdued. She handled it better than Max had, at the time, and dropped the bossy act to stay by Max’s side during the funeral processions.

“I’m sorry,” she quietly said, letting Max pull her into a hug.

The second time was when one day, it was her Grandma Pearl who came home alone, sans one Clayton Forrester. Kinga didn’t suspect anything was immediately wrong, Pearl had been staying in town for the past few weeks, maybe today’s experiment was just taking a bit longer than usual, Mike was proving to be more resilient than Joel--

“Kinga, honey...your father is gone. He isn’t ever coming back.”

Kinga’s mother had long been gone. To where...Max didn’t know. He considered himself lucky his mom was still around, but no one ever spoke of what happened to Kinga’s mom. Kinga seemed to just fall apart when she learned her father was effectively dead, begging Grandma Pearl to tell her it was just an elaborate joke, that her father wasn’t gone, that...that Mike and Joel hadn’t effectively outlasted him _and_ TV’s Frank.

Clayton’s funeral was a rather quiet affair, only attended by a few people from the Forrester family and some of Max’s family members. Kinga was sobbing, tears streaming down her face as she angrily declared she’d finish what her dad started, and break a man with the power of terrible movies.

“Why is it Mike and Joel got away with this while dad and Frank didn’t?!” she cried, voice breaking. “It’s not fair! It’s not...It’s not fair!”

She turned to Max, eyes puffy and red. “You’ll help me, won’t you, Max? We’ll--We’ll finish the job our dads started! We’ll find a movie that can break them!!”

Of course Max accepted, he wanted revenge just as badly as Kinga did back then. And so, they studied together at Gizmonic, eventually restarting where her dear old dad had failed years ago. Yet, it was always around this time of year, the day she learned her father passed, she just shut herself off from almost everybody around her.

So, here they were, on their secret base in the dark side of the moon, with the Satellite of Love attached via what Kinga deemed the Umbilicus 2.0 to the base, a crew of almost-superhumans called the ‘Skeleton Crew’ because they resembled skeletons, and a clone of Pearl called Synthia. And, currently, Kinga was holed up in her room, door shut tight. Max stood outside it, unsure what to do aside from stare at the skull emblazoned on the door.

“...Kinga, is it alright for me to come in?” he asked, quietly.

He got no answer for a good minute or so, and he began to reconsider attempting to comfort her. It never worked, why would it work--

The door opened quickly, Max stumbling back in surprise before Kinga stuck her head out. Her hair was a ruffled mess, a few strands sticking out. Her shoulders curled forward, her eyes red.

“Get in,” she ordered, voice low. Max wasted no time into hurrying into Kinga’s bedroom, Kinga slamming the door behind her.

“...what do you want?” she asked, not looking at Max at first.

“...I wanted to try to help you somehow,” Max said, gripping his arm. “I don’t enjoy seeing you so...depressed. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“...just...just stay with me,” Kinga ordered, walking over to her bed as though she were walking through cement. She plopped down on her bed, pulling her legs close to her. Max simply sat beside her, and they stayed like that for a good while.

“Max...why is it our dads had to die?” she eventually asked.

Max shrugged helplessly. “...heck if I know. I just know several years ago, first my dad died, then yours did not long later.”

Kinga grunted, gripping the blankets on her bed. “It’s not...not fair. Okay, so they were basically torturing two guys, but did it justify them just...just taking them away from us?”

Max shook his head. “Of course not.”

“You don’t have to play ‘yes man’ right now, Max,” Kinga said, looking over at him. “Be honest.”

“I am, though,” Max responded. “What else do I say? That I’m glad dad is gone?”

He snorted, looking at the floor. “...this time of year is real shitty, huh?”

“You can say that again,” Kinga muttered, lying back on the bed. “At least it didn’t occur on a day we have to send a movie over. Those bots would have a field day making fun of us.”

“Hey, you never know, they were around to see our dads die,” Max pointed out.

Kinga laughed, short and pained, raising a hand to her face. “Please! They were made by the first guy who got trapped up on that Satellite, I’m pretty sure they would enjoy realizing we’re still upset over losing the guys who trapped their creator!”

“...you have a point,” Max admitted.

Neither of them spoke for a few moments. Eventually, Kinga sat up. “...honestly, I don’t know what else to do. How do you cope?”

Max pointed to his hair. “Try to keep some part of him alive in some fashion. Er...well, in a fashion of sorts, not like re-enacting how your dad tried to kill mine, but...the idea of dying my hair came to me junior year of college. Figured it couldn’t hurt, we were already pretty set on what we wanted to do, and it stuck.”

Kinga stared at his hair before immediately standing up. “That does it. I gotta see if Brain Guy can send me some hair dye...”

\--

Kinga held her chin high the following Invention Exchange, Max at her side. Jonah couldn’t help but stare, mouth hanging open a little.

“Kinga, uh...your hair...”

In her hair was a white streak, reaching from her forehead all the way to the tip of her hair-bun, as plain as a neon light in a dark room. She met Jonah’s gaze evenly, folding her arms.

“What about it, Jonah?” she questioned. Crow and Tom stared as well before exchanging looks.

“Well, uh...you do look a lot more like your dad now,” Crow commented.

“Though, uh, more red,” Tom added.

“Of course, Tweedledee and Tweedledum!” Kinga said, puffing out her chest. “Now, are you going to show me what you made this week, or are you just going to chat all day?”

**Author's Note:**

> ngl i really like depictions of kinga with a white streak in her hair like her dad's. i personally imagine she would dye her hair in memory of her dad, tbh

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] The Unimaginable](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12020433) by [speccygeekgrrl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/speccygeekgrrl/pseuds/speccygeekgrrl)




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